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From Our Own Correspondent
The Calm in Guam
00:28:03
Despite the threat of North Korean missiles, we find a surprising calm in Guam.
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This is the BBC.
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Hello. Today, a murderous slice of history remembered this week. Across India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, we hear surprising memories of partitions 70 years ago. On the subcontinent, we have more migration tales, but not of people leaving for Europe, but coming from it to a small island in the Atlantic. The joy of having to wait. Or. Or not. In Cuba, where personal administration involves much bureaucracy. And if you go down to the woods today in Sweden's Arctic, be prepared for the bears. This week, North Korea's leader has been seen enthusiastically reviewing plans to launch ballistic missiles towards Guam. Guam, for most of us, I suspect, needed finding in the Atlas before Kim Jong Un fixed his glare on it. US Territory, a tiny speck in the Pacific with military bases covering a quarter of the island and 6,000 US military folk among the 160,000 locals. Although still prepared to unleash enveloping fire at Guam, Kim Jong Un said he'll wait and see what the foolish Yankees do next before making a final decision to strike. Despite the slight softening in rhetoric, you might expect the people of Guam to be living in fear as the threat of nuclear nuclear war continues to loom over them. But that's not what Rupert Wingfield Hayes
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found Writing this I am sitting at the top of a towering cliff, looking out over the vast, empty expanse of the Pacific Ocean. Rain clatters on the tin roof of the cafe. A warm tropical breeze rustles the trees outside. A short distance away, Japanese and South Korean tourists are posing for selfies at the lookout point. As I wait for my burger to arrive, I ask the young waiter if he's worried about the North Korean threat to this island. He laughs. No, sir, he says, smiling and shaking his head. Don't worry. Nothing is going to happen. Reading the headlines over the last week and a half, you could be forgiven for thinking we have just been on the verge of nuclear war. So why is my waiter so calm? 10 days earlier and I'm sitting in another cafe in the middle of Seoul, sipping sweet Korean fruit tea. The fiery rhetoric from Pyongyang has just begun to ramp up. Across the table sits a retired US diplomat. He spent more than 10 years attempting to negotiate a deal with North Korea to end its nuclear weapons program. Are North Korea's new missile tests a game changer? I ask him. Might Trump really attack the north to take them out? He smiles and shakes his head. Since 1953, there has been one overriding imperative for the US in this region, he says. That is to avoid another war on the Korean peninsula. But what about President Trump? I Ask. He says he will never accept a North Korean nuclear threat to the U.S. he smiles again. Look, it's possible Trump might get angry and do something stupid that could set off a conflict by accident, he says. But most of this is bluff and ignorance. Trump's policy is essentially the same as Obama's. I call up an old friend and veteran North Korea watcher, Andrei Lenkov. He has a fabulous Russian accent and a rich sense of humor. Trump just makes a lot more noise than Obama, andrei says. He then turns serious. We have had two crises on the Korean Peninsula in the last five years, he says. Both have been manufactured. In 2012, it was the North Koreans. Now it is being done by the US President Trump is playing from Pyongyang's rule book. According to Andrei, the aim of winding up the rhetoric is to gain concessions. Pyongyang has done this for decades, scaring the bejesus out of everyone, then accepting talks or economic assistance in return for backing off. President Trump, he says, is now using the same tactic, not only to scare North Korea but to scare its main backer, China. At the tea shop, I asked the former US Diplomat if it could work. Are China and North Korea afraid of President Trump? I ask. No, he says. They don't believe his threats. But he does scare his allies here in South Korea and in Japan. Sitting on the cliff top in Guam, I can now see a large grey KC135 tanker jet turning into land at Andersen Air Force Base. There is a reason Kim Jong Un has chosen to target this little Pacific island. This is the US Military storehouse in the Pacific, the island's governor, Eddie Calvo, tells me. Governor Calvo is a large man with a winning smile. There are more munitions stored here on Guam than any other site in the United States, he says. That's why we're so important. Governor Calvo is another who is unfazed by North Korea's threats from before the crisis began to now. I have not changed the threat level on the island, he says. Why not? I ask. I speak to our intelligence and military people every day, he says. I see no reason to be worried. This does not mean that anyone here or in South Korea, is complacent about North Korea's missiles or nukes. To Governor Calvo, the logic is simple. If North Korea were to hit Guam, the response would be immediate and overwhelming. For Pyongyang, it would be suicidal. It is a strategy of deterrence that has worked for 65 years, and it hasn't changed in the last two weeks. The truth is there are really no better options in the long run. North Korea may begin to realize its nuclear weapons have done nothing to resolve any of its problems, says the former US diplomat. They can't use their nukes and they can't eat them. At the moment, they feel really good, he says. But they have spent all that money, and it will bring them nothing.
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Rupert Wingfield Hayes Seventy years ago, India was partitioned along religious lines. Now we have India, Pakistan and Bangladesh and still vivid memories of the murderous times. The total number of people killed during partition will never be known. The violence of those chaotic weeks was often frenzied, and eyewitness accounts of what happened often dwell on how even the kindest neighbours were swept up into supporting or even taking part in mob killings in Pakistan. Sikanda Kamani found a set of unexpected memories from those involved.
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In 1947, as India was partitioned and Pakistan created after years of living together in relative peace, Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus tore each other apart in communal rioting. Millions of people fled. Hundreds of thousands were killed. I wanted to understand the violence and to meet those who took part in it. Abdullah, a thin, sprightly man in his mid-80s, was sitting outside his small grocery shop in Rawalpindi, northeastern Pakistan, when we arrived for our interview. As we greeted him, he stood to attention, gave a salute, then, just a few inches from my face, began to belt out a folk song. In 1947, he and his family had come to Rawalpindi in Pakistan from Ambala in India. There he had seen Muslims attacked by Sikh and Hindu mobs, and once he'd arrived in Pakistan, he wanted revenge. My brother took his sword and killed the Sikhs like this, he said, thrusting his arm forward, stabbing the air. And what were you doing? I asked. Didn't you feel sorry for his victims? I was encouraging him. Hit them, kill them. That's what I was saying. He was clear that before 1947 he'd had a perfectly good relationship with Sikhs and Hindus, but equally clear he has no regrets about the violence. They killed Muslims in India. We killed them in Pakistan, he insisted. He had even kept the sword his brother had used as a souvenir and wanted to show it to me. He pulled out a long, straight, slightly rusty blade from the corner of a room. Immediately he began waving it around wildly, slicing through the air in front of me. I froze. He was play fighting, but the sword still looked sharp, and I didn't want to lose an eye to this eccentric old man. My producer managed to calm him down, but only temporarily. Back out on the street, he began brandishing the sword again, this time in front of a small crowd of giggling schoolboys. I worried he was delusional and was making everything up. But his son told us that as far as he knew, it was all true. In the industrial city of Gujranwala, I met two other elderly men who had been involved in the killings during partition. Mohammad Akram, who was partly deaf, shouted answers at me in gruff Punjabi. His involvement in the bloodshed began after a Muslim had been murdered by a Hindu. A local Hindu Congress Party politician had come to offer his condolences, but the Muslim crowd wanted blood. Someone struck him on the head with a brick and he fell. Others then began to join in the attack, including Muhammad. But surely this was an innocent man who had come to pay his respects. I asked, don't you feel guilty? His reply, guilt? What guilt? They killed a Muslim, but this man hadn't. I argued Muhammad wasn't having it. He recalled that because he was only a teenager at the time, others had taken the lead in the violence. But he still played a role. We had an A team of the older guys. I was in the B team with the younger ones, he remembered. We used to go into the Hindu and Sikh homes, beating them up. Abdul Hakim Daa has a kindly round face, but he too was unrepentant. He told me he thought he'd helped kill around 50 Sikhs. There was something in the air at the time, he said by way of explanation. I was around 13, so I couldn't do it alone. I was part of a group with my uncles and cousins. We used to hide behind a corner and drag Sikhs off the horse drawn tonga carts. As soon as they were on the ground, we would stab them and hit them with iron clubs. After 70 years, do you think it was a good thing you did or a bad thing? I asked. It was neither good nor bad, he said at first. When I asked him later how he felt during the killings, with a smile he said, I enjoyed it. Wasn't it difficult as a 13 year old to kill someone like that? I wondered. I meant psychologically. But he didn't understand and proudly told me how strong he used to be. The nearest I got to any deeper understanding was when he explained that in his experience, Muslims and Sikhs lived very separate lives. Before 1947, I'd already heard Mohammad Akram claim that the Hindus and Sikhs of Gurjunwala used to be much better off than the city's Muslims and that he was enraged by the atrocities committed against Muslims elsewhere. I met many other Pakistanis who had lived through partition. Some had been victims of the horrific violence themselves at the hands of Hindus and Sikhs. Others had even bravely attempted to save their Sikh or Hindu neighbours from angry mobs. But it seemed that these three men had no sense of self reflection. Maybe after having killed, it's easier not to. Maybe that lack of reflection is why they were able to kill in the first place.
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Secunda Kymani to Cape Verde, the former Portuguese colony, an archipelago off the west coast of Africa. Like many remote island nations, it's faced periods of mass emigration after the end of the transatlantic slave trade in the 19th century and again following severe droughts in the 20th century. Today, more people with Cape Verdean origins live outside the country than within it. But on her recent visit, Hannah Armstrong discovered a new energy taking hold in a place once associated with melancholy and loss.
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The table is already heaped with fresh conch when a waitress brings a chilled bottle of crisp vino verde, balancing it on her head. The singer I'm dining with, a diva called Fancha, leans in close, speaking up over the batuque, a fast tempoed call in response, beaten out by a battalion of Cap Verdean women and girls onto drums made of rolled up rags. Our music, our morna, is based on longing and nostalgia, she tells me, peering out from underneath a whopping scarlet afro. The morna, a kind of ballad, is best known abroad through the captivating voice of Cesarea Evora, who was Fancha's mentor. Longing and nostalgia tied Cap Verdeans, like many captives, together 3,000 miles off Africa's Atlantic coast. These islands were uninhabited up until the 15th century, when the Portuguese filled them with slaves intended for the Atlantic crossing. More recent waves of migration, echoing those untold numbers of bodies sent to watery graves and worse, inspired Evora's most famous song, Sodud, a husky morna whose theme is nostalgia for home. The desire to leave while being forced to stay and the desire to stay while being forced to leave has been described as the heart of Cap Verdean tragedy. Today, the Uptempo Batuke is more on trend. The capital, Praia feels like a tropical old Europe, its breezy cobblestone streets lined with jewel toned tile roofed houses and flamboyant trees, cafes and clubs. Cap Verde is a showcase of the Africa Rising narrative, an example of how a downtrodden country with few natural resources can turn things around with good governance. It ranks among Africa's most democratic and least corrupt nations, with middle income country status and 6% average annual growth. Last year, China's Macau Legend Development Company started building a 250 million dollar casino complex, sparking a boom in construction and tourism investment and an influx of cash and jobs. While Cap Verde's neighbors must deal with the deadly toll of south to north migration to Europe, here the reverse is happening. Thousands of Portuguese come to Cap Verde each year in search of work, bucking the regional trend. In West Africa, the desire to leave is much diminished. The island's famous nostalgia now feeds mainly on desire to return. Knowing that I'm going back to New York tomorrow makes me nostalgic already, fancha tells me. Even when I'm here for weeks, all I can think is that I have to leave. I meet Cap Verdean bakers, engineers, surfers and musicians who praise their country's bureaucratic expedience. It's unheard of in Africa for people to comment on how easy it is to register a business, apply for a loan or file for tax credits. And yet here they were. Their only complaint is of overabundant love lives. I watch a carnival clad batuque singer lead a conch shell horn section. I see the presidents of Portugal and Cap Verde dance pasado side by side in the main Square. Kay is 30, an estate agent from Plano, Texas. Her mother left Cap Verde to settle in the USA before she was born. Kay moved back to the island six months ago to start a bed and breakfast. I just want to hop around and start new things and let someone else take over. It's a nice climate here. I just see it growing, she says. She wants to launch the country's first taco truck. Her mother, who left the drought stricken islands 40 years ago and hasn't been back since, is baffled. She can't quite comprehend that the broken home she fled has now become a serene retreat with kale salads and surf schools. The village of Tarrafal lies about 90 minutes drive north of Praia. I took a local minibus there, along with a goat and 13 people through Rocky mountain villages strewn with towering papaya trees and pigs. Tarrafal is a quaint, colorful place famous for surfing and for its concentration camp. Under the fascist Salazar regime, Portugal used to send Portuguese, Angolan, Ghanaian and Cap Verdean political prisoners here for confinement and torture. Some were left to die in an open roofed cell called the Frying Pan, where they baked to death on the concrete. The camp was closed at independence in 1975 and converted into a museum a decade ago. The color and joy to be seen on Tarrafal's glittering beaches today hint at a promising new beginning built not on forgetting the past but by forging forward. At a club, I meet a Capverdean in his early 30s who lives in Massachusetts and wants to move back over there it's the afternoon, he tells me. Here it's the morning.
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Hannah Armstrong According to researchers at University College London, we British will queue for an average of six minutes before giving up and won't join a line of more than six people. Though lack of polit queuing abroad enrages us. In rural China many years ago, foreigners queuing for a bus were mystified why they never managed to board, unaware that fighting your way on signified not only overcrowding but that you deserve to travel the queue never made it. Cuba presents variations on the theme of queuing Banks present a special challenge. There have been attempts to speed things up, but Will Grant has found a mounting sense of lost momentum.
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In January 1965, the late Fidel Castro described bureaucracy in Cuba as the clandestine enemy. I believe with full heart that socialism must protect itself as much against bureaucracy as imperialism, he said, declaring it the year of the battle against bureaucracy. It is a great evil, one which slows production, consumes the best minds in unnecessary tasks, and greatly saps the energy of the people. This week Castro would have turned 91. And needless to say, his battle against bureaucracy is still far from over. On an island which often requires you to jump through three or four administrative hoops to achieve the most simple of tasks, you you begin to appreciate those people who do actually bring a degree of efficiency and speed to your life. Like my bank tellers, four middle aged men with similar taste in ties, short sleeved shirts and bifocal glasses. Their branch is like an oasis of efficacy in a desert of red tape. That's not to say trips to the bank don't take time. There can be long queues just to get through the door, and it's often slowed by arbitrary new rules imposed on the staff from above. For example, when I first arrived in Cuba three years ago, I could pay my rent at the bank simply by transferring it directly into the account of the state run entity that owns the building. One day, though, I was told that practice had been banned. Who knows why? Instead, I have to withdraw the amount in cash, drive it across Havana and hand it to a different state bureaucrat. She then drives it back to the very same bank and hands it to the very same teller who served me earlier in the day. Maddening. The latest wheeze is even more bizarre. Utterly out of the blue, an edict came down from on high that any transaction of more than $1,000 on a credit card must be phoned into headquarters and approved. This nationwide measure affects every state owned bank on the island. Can you imagine the wasted man hours entangling tourism and reducing business agility? It does nothing to assist Fidel Castro's five decades long war on inefficiency. While we wait, the teller, Pedro, and I shoot the breeze a little. It's one step forward and two back, I complain, nodding towards the phone call taking place behind him. Pedro goes further. I'd say it's one forward and five or six back, he says, evidently as frustrated as I am by the inexplicable new layers of administration. One forward, two back. It's felt like that kind of year in Cuba. Earlier this month, the government stopped issuing any new licenses for private businesses. Since the rules changed around a decade ago, hundreds of thousands of Cubans have jumped ship from their state jobs and into the private sector. It's easily the most dynamic part of the island's planned economy and allows ordinary Cubans to earn many times the meager monthly wage of a government job. So the recent rule change has left plenty of people in limbo. Having spent savings on turning their homes into bed and breakfasts or small restaurants, they now lack the official paperwork to become self employed, so can't open their businesses. The government insists the freeze isn't indefinite, but some fear they've been here before and seen days turn into weeks and weeks into months. As well as Fidel Castro's birthday, there was another anniversary this week in Cuba, two years since the US Embassy in Havana was reopened, that hot August day marked the warmest point in the thaw between the old enemies, quickly followed by a visit from President Obama. Today, it feels like a distant memory. President Trump wasted little time in undoing his predecessor's policy of engagement. Now, in a twist straight from the pages of a Cold War spy novel, the at least five US Embassy staff in Havana and one Canadian diplomat have experienced severe hearing difficulties, brought on, they believe, by covert sonic devices placed in or near their homes. It's unclear by whom. Surveillance is normal in Cuba, especially for foreign diplomats and journalists. For decades, both sides have needled each other, making life trickier and more uncomfortable for their diplomatic counterparts. As part of normal Cold War hostilities, provocations would range from the innocuous to the borderline sinister. One former Western diplomat recounts how his dog was poisoned and, suspecting foul play, he complained to the Cuban authorities. No sooner had the words left his mouth than a vet miraculously turned up at his door to treat the animal. But a deliberate health attack, as the Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson called it, against the US Diplomatic corps would be unprecedented and would set back strained relations yet again. The Cubans claim no knowledge of how the diplomats came to lose their hearing and have ordered an investigation to find out who's to blame. Another clandestine enemy, perhaps Will Grant.
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Lapland stretches across northern Norway, Finland, Russia and Sweden. Up to 24 hours of daylight makes summer months the perfect time to spot the army of wildlife. Arctic fox and hare, wolverine, elk, giant mosquitoes. I know I used to live there. And brown bear in Swedish Lapland Elizabeth Hodgson went down to the woods in search of a big surprise.
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I sometimes think bears can read my mind. This wasn't what I expected or wanted to hear as I followed Michael Swara to his bear hide deep in the ancient forests of Swedish Lapland. We were hoping to see one of the region's brown bears. By nature, they're shy creatures but can weigh up to 250kg, so an encounter out in the wild isn't something to take lightly. If we do see a bear in our path, my guide continued, I will say to it, hello, I'm Michael. Please go back the way you came. You have to respect the bears, especially if it's a mother with cubs. Comfort zone is a favourite modern concept, but I'd left my own a good way back up the track. In a forest packed full of wild and exotic creatures, my only option was to trust my guide. As we trekked further into the woodland, Michael stopped. Shh, he whispered. I found something interesting. Bear tracks. I hissed, pulse racing and adrenaline pumping. No, it's moose poo, he replied. The Germans love it. Michael's English was good, but I was sure something was lost in translation. German people like moose poo, I slowly repeated. Yeah, anything connected to moose. Sure enough, a quick Internet search a few days later revealed another hidden world to me. A whole industry devoted to to the sale of moose by products. That surprising insight was one of many Michael had to offer. His Saami, part of Sweden's indigenous population. He grew up in the far north with the kinds of animals I'd only ever seen in cartoons or David Attenborough documentaries. Bears in the spring and summer, moose in the autumn, golden eagles during the winter, and reindeer all year round. He's a skilled hunter, but told me he now prefers to shoot with his camera. Last year Michael built a six person hide and twice a week in the summer he takes visitors down to his little corner of the wilderness to sit in an almost silent state of readiness in the hope of seeing a majestic brown bear. We arrived at the hide around six o' clock in the evening. I set my camera on a little bean bag to steady it and pointed the lens through a camouflaged hole in the wall. During the summer months, this part of Sweden enjoys 24 hour light and the bears are almost constantly on the prowl, looking for a partner in mating season and to fuel up for the harsh winter ahead. Still, bear watching is not for the impatient and we plan to be on lookout throughout the night. We'll be here for the next 17 hours, so you need to be comfortable, said Michael. Fortunately, he'd brought supplies. Smoked reindeer, open sandwiches and blueberry cake with vanilla cream. As the hours ticked by, every movement in the forest triggered a twitch of anticipation in us. The best time to see a bear is between eight and 12, whispered Michael. I did take the occasional comfort break, but at all other times my eyes were glued to the window. By 10 o' clock the tension got too much and Michael brought out the blueberry cake. It was homemade and absolutely delicious, but it was just a momentary distraction. If we see a bear, it will be worth the wait, said Michael. In Sami culture, bears are one of the highest forms of animal. They're so powerful and intelligent. One of the cleverest animals there is. Midnight came and went and a second round of sandwiches was produced. But still no bear. I caught a glimpse of my wide eyed, pale faced reflection in the window. It was desperate, haunted by the spectre of the elusive creature. By 3am the eager anticipation had been replaced by a sense of longing and emptiness. Michael advised a power nap. Waking with a jolt at 4am, I sprinted to the window. Why had I slept? What had I missed? How could I have been so stupid? It's OK, no bear came, said Michael gently. By 8am we reluctantly conceded defeat, although the pain was somewhat lessened by homemade cloudberry jam for breakfast. Do visitors mind if they don't see a bear? I asked as we walked back to the road. No, Michael replied. Most of them just enjoy the quietness and the natural beauty. I kept quiet myself for once, keeping one eye out for bears and the
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other for moose poo, elk poo and mosquitoes. I have to add Elizabeth Hodgson in the Swedish Arctic. And that's all from us today. We'll be back with more from our correspondence next Saturday morning.